Widening Your Horizons

If you are a professional photographer, you know how the photography market has morphed over the last few years. We have more competition than ever from our fellow pro shooters. The relative ease of creating digital images has inundated stock photo agencies to the point that our images often get lost in a “sea of similars.”

To add insult to injury, we are now seeing a tidal wave of smart phone images and a perception that images should be free!

Over the last 21 years, the art of creating visually compelling (and highly marketable) panoramic images has brought me the unique appeal I always wanted as a professional photographer.

A Profitable and Fun Niche

I found that the panoramic format is fun, as well as challenging, in many ways. I love the cinematic feel of panoramas and enjoy the compositional opportunities the format has to offer. By concentrating my efforts, I have found a unique way to compete in a changing marketplace.

Creating Your Panoramas

First of all, you may want to investigate the technical aspects and gear requirements of the format. One of the most important technical aspects of creating panos is that your lens must rotate around the entrance pupil of the lens. Sometimes, this point is called the “Nodal Point.” This is essential to getting a good stitch. You can read a good explanation about it here.

When shooting images for a pano be sure your camera is set on manual exposure and focus. If these change during your exposure sequence, the resulting panorama will be useless. Also, be sure to use a remote to trigger your exposures as any vibrations can ruin the panorama.

I set my exposure based on the brightest portion of the panorama using “Expose to the Right” technique.

Use Gear You Already Own

Add a good a panoramic tripod head, either manual or automated and you are on your way. Here are a few panoramic gear suppliers;

Dedicated Panoramic Cameras?

With the exception of the Seitz Roundshot Digital cameras, all of the dedicated panoramic cameras use film… not that there’s anything wrong with that! Actually, the Fuji and Linhof panoramic cameras are fantastic. The problem is that we just don’t know how much longer we’ll be able to purchase film and find labs to process it. These cameras served me well for many years. That being said, I have rarely used my film cameras in the last few years.

Most camera manufacturers have not produced digital panoramic cameras due largely to the lack of appropriate sensors. Development costs and what would be a miniscule scale of production are to blame. The Seitz cameras are the exception, as I mentioned. Their panoramic cameras are famous for their Swiss precision and durable design. I use their VR-Drive tripod head which automates the process of shooting images needed for the subsequent stitching process. The customer service at Seitz is first rate! Ask for Werner Seitz. Mr Seitz has been very helpful to me over the years.

Aspect Ratio?

Panoramics can be any aspect ratio greater than 2-1. However the best selling and most common aspect ratio used is 3-1. Unless there is a compelling compositional reason not to use the 3-1 aspect ratio, that is what I recommend. The 3-1 ratio being exactly double the width of the full frame 35mm standard format. As such, 3-1 works well for advertising and coffee table books where the images are often displayed across two pages.

Specialized Software

PTGui and Autopano Giga are stitching programs which allow a greater degree of stitching control and precision over Photoshop CC. These programs allow you to create panoramas, but also 360 degree virtual reality images. HDR Expose 3 will allow you to create extremely precise and realistic HDR images and HDR panoramic images. Although there are many HDR software programs, HDR Expose 3 now has a unique “Pano Prep Batch Processing” mode. This new mode allows the application of identical tone-mapping to the HDR panels for subsequent stitching.

What to Shoot

You will need to consider the types of subject matter that are in demand if you are hoping to get your images licensed on the one hand, or sold as “Print On Demand” on the other. My experience is that compelling scenics will sell, however well composed city skyline images can do extremely well. Nicely executed composites are salable if you have a great concept, and if you have excellent compositing skills.

I have found that standard views of well known places may well become best sellers. The images must be well composed, clean and taken in attractive light.

Marketing Your Panoramas

Working with a specialty panoramic stock agency can be very helpful. I am under contract with Panoramic Images (Doug Segal, President).

Other options for marketing your panoramic images are increasing and well worth investigating. Here are a few that come to mind;

I suggest you also set up a section of your website to show off your panoramas. My website is tightly focused on my panoramic work.

Mastering the Panoramic Medium

The rules of composition for panoramas are no different from standard formats. I have found that one point perspective to be especially effective with panos. The Golden Mean or Golden Ratio is a powerful tool. For years, I used a Golden Mean grid over the ground glass of my V-Pan 617 MKIII panoramic view camera.

Learning More

The varied technical aspects of panorama shooting are beyond the scope of this article, but stay tuned as I plan to follow up soon with more information on the subject!

About the Guest Contributor

Twenty one years ago, I began a voyage to photograph the American landscape with high-resolution panoramic cameras. I used several cameras for this project, including the Fuji G617, the V-Pan 617 Mark III and more recently, high resolution Canon digital cameras and an advanced panoramic device called the Seitz VR-Drive.

There have been many moving moments during this long journey. However, the people I met along the way, have been the greatest source of inspiration throughout my travels.

I wish you the best with your own dreams, photography and adventures of discovery.

Outdoor brand Mammut recently teamed up with avid climbers Dani Arnold and Stephan Siegrist to document and create an incredible interactive 360º climb up the side of Eiger: a 13,000-foot tall mountain in the Alps.

The interactive website, aptly titled Mammut Project360, was created using an impressive, custom-built 360º GoPro setup to capture images continuously as the two capable climbers made their way up the mountainside.

“It seems pretty clear that smartphones have become the point-and-shoots of our time. The latest smartphone cams on the market have resolutions up to 41 megapixels, well more than the 10Mp of my old Canon PowerShot S90. Even the average top-end smartphone sports a lens that delivers at least 16Mp.”

“So, other than driving the point-and-shoot guys out of business, what have they achieved, these super-cam smartphones? Well, a lot, and they’re going to do more.”

“Now, 16Mp will support any format of the new 4K displays, which have roughly 4,000 pixels along the horizontal edge. In fact, depending on the standard, they can vary from 3,840 to 5,120, and have anywhere from ~7Mp up to ~16.3Mp total, but the standard for ultra high definition television (UHDTV) uses just a bit more than 8Mp.”

Seitz is refining the Roundshot VR Drive to include some great new features. The advances are quite significant. First of all, this precision panoramic head will now be fully motorized in the vertical as well as horizontal directions. Also the device will be capable of full HDR captures. There are various options to meet the needs of a variety of panoramic photographers.

This was an image that I made with the Canon 5D and Seitz VR Drive during a trip to Colorado in the fall of 2007. Recently, I noticed that I had never processed this HDR panorama. So, I thought I’d try using some new software. I used DXO Optics Pro 6 to process the RAW files. I did this to eliminate chromatic aberrations and to reduce image noise. For stitching, I used the latest beta version of Autopano Pro from Kolor, which has a fabulous new stacking feature. It stacks the bracketed exposures and then stitches them in perfect registration. I used HDR Expose to merge the three resulting files. Finally I did some post processing in Photoshop CS5 and the Viveza2 Photoshop plug-in from Nik.